The Wilderness Castaways

“Let me try it. I can handle the wheel all right,” he continued, attempting to take the spokes.

At that moment Captain Bluntt observed him.

“By the imps of the sea!” he roared, striding forward and grasping Paul’s arm with a steel-like grip that made the youth wince as he vainly struggled to free himself. “Keep away from that wheelhouse or I’ll heave you overboard. By the imps of the sea I will! Heave you overboard! Heave you overboard!”

“I guess I can go where I want to,” answered Paul impudently, but none the less frightened.

Without releasing his grasp, or deigning to reply, the Captain half led, half dragged, Paul to Remington.

“This youngster must keep aft of the wheelhouse, sir! He was talking to the steersman, sir! Talking to him! I’ll not permit it, sir!”

“I’m sorry,” apologized Remington. “I’m sure he didn’t understand that he was doing wrong, and he won’t do it again.”

Captain Bluntt, mollified but still ruffled, returned to his duties, and Paul, almost in tears, lounged alone, amidships, sulking.

Dan had witnessed the disciplining of Paul, and in the hope of smoothing matters presently wandered over to the lad, who was still sulking and nursing his injured dignity.

“Th’ skipper’s wonderful gruff sometimes,” ventured Dan, “but he don’t mean nothin’. ’Tis sort o’ his way.”

“Mr. Remington hired this old tub, and I’m his guest, and I guess I can go where I want to on it.”

“’Tis an able craft, an’ no old tub,” resented Dan. “Th’ skipper is master at sea. ’Tis a rule of the sea.”

“He isn’t my master.”

“No, not that way. He’s just master o’ th’ ship. Your folks is payin’ th’ owners for th’ voyage, an’ they is payin’ th’ skipper t’ run th’ ship safe, an’ he has t’ make rules t’ run un safe or we’d be foulin’ reefs or gettin’ off our course.”

Paul deigned no reply, and after an awkward pause Dan inquired:

“What’s your name?”

“Paul Densmore.”

“Mine’s Dan Rudd. Dan’s short for Dan’l. It’s after Dan’l that was in th’ lion’s den, Dad says. Yours is from th’ Bible, too. I reckon you was named after th’ apostle Paul.”

“No, after my grandfather.”

“’Tis th’ same name, anyway. Dad reads out o’ th’ Bible nights when he’s home. We live in Ragged Cove, but Dad’s fishin’ down on th’ Labrador now with th’ Ready Hand.”

“The ‘Ready Hand?’ What’s that?”

“She’s a spry little schooner. Dad’s part owner. I been down with her twice.”

Dan told of fishing adventures on the Labrador. Paul described his home in New York, the great buildings, the subway and elevated railroads, the great transatlantic steamships—a thousand wonders in which Dan was intensely interested.

In the recital Paul soon forgot his injured dignity. He was glad of the companionship of a boy of his own age. No one, indeed, could long resist Dan’s good nature, and when the sailor lad finally said it was time to “turn in,” and they parted for the night, each was pleased with his new acquaintance—an acquaintanceship that was to ripen into life-long friendship. They little guessed that they were destined to be companions in many adventures, to share many hardships, to face dangers and even death together.

The North Star rounded Cape Charles the following evening, passed into the open Atlantic, and turned her prow northward. Innumerable icebergs, many of fantastic form and stupendous proportions, were visible from the deck, their blue-green pinnacles reflecting the rays of the setting sun in a glory of prismatic colors. On their port lay the low, storm-scoured rocks of Labrador’s dreary coast, its broken line marked by many stranded icebergs. Now and again a distant whale spouted great columns of water. The white sail of a fishing schooner, laboring northward, was visible upon the horizon. The scene, grim, rugged, but beautiful, appealed to Paul’s imagination as the most wonderful and entrancing he had ever beheld.

That night Paul was suddenly awakened from sound slumber by a tremendous shock. He sprang from his berth with the thought that the ship had struck a reef or iceberg and might be sinking. Terrified, he rushed to the companionway, where he was nearly thrown off his feet by another shock. At length he reached the deck. Spread everywhere around the ship he could see, in the shimmering moonlight, nothing but ice. From the crow’s nest, on the mizzenmast, came the call of the ice pilot: “Port! Starboard! Port! Starboard!”

The lad’s terror increased as he witnessed the changed condition of the sea. It seemed to him that the great mass of heavy ice which closed upon the ship on every side must inevitably crush the little vessel and send her to the bottom. As he ran forward, another and heavier shock than any that had preceded sent him sprawling upon the deck.

CHAPTER II

THE FIRST BEAR

PAUL had scarcely regained his feet when the gruff voice of Captain Bluntt exclaimed:

“Well! Well, lad! And what brings you out o’ your snug berth at this time o’ night?”

“What’s—what’s happened? Are we wrecked?” asked the frightened Paul.

“Wrecked? No, no, lad! Just a bit of ice—just a bit of ice. ’Tis all right, b’y. Go below and sleep. ’Tis wonderful raw above decks for them thin clothes you’re wearin’.”

Paul, dressed only in pajamas, his feet bare, was indeed shivering. Much relieved, he turned down the companionway, glad to tuck himself in his warm berth, presently to fall asleep to the distant, monotonous call of the ice pilot, “Port! Starboard! Port! Starboard!” and in spite of repeated shocks, as the vessel charged the ice, alternately backing and forging ahead at full speed in her attack upon the pack.

The ice was left behind them during the night, and when morning dawned a stiff northeast breeze, cold and damp, had sprung up, and a sea was rising. The ship began to roll disagreeably, and at midday Remington encountered Paul, deathly pale, unsteadily groping his way to his stateroom.

“What’s the matter, Paul?” he asked.

“I—I feel sick,” Paul answered.

The call had come for dinner, but Paul was not interested, and retired to his berth. The fog mist thickened, and all that afternoon and night the fog horn sounded at regular intervals, a warning to fishing craft of the vessel’s proximity.

For three days Paul, in the throes of seasickness, was unable to leave his berth, but on the morning of the fourth day he reappeared on deck, where his friends greeted him with good-natured jokes.

They were entering Hudson Straits. On their port, near at hand, lay the rocky, verdureless Button Islands, and far to the southward rose the rugged, barren peaks of the Torngaek Mountains in northeastern Labrador. To the northward in hazy outline Resolution Island marked the southern extremity of Baffin Land.

Here and there, spread over the sea, were small vagrant ice pans, messengers from the far Arctic, which gave evidence of the high latitude the ship had attained.

Now and again seals showed their heads above the water for a moment, quickly to disappear again. Sea gulls, their white wings gleaming in the sunlight, circled about, but nowhere was a sail or any indication of human life visible upon the wide horizon.

It was a new world to Paul, and different from anything he had ever imagined. The utter absence of vessels, the apparently uninhabited and uninhabitable land, the awful primitive grandeur of it all gave him a vague, indescribable sense of fear—such a feeling as one ascending for the first time in a balloon must experience upon peering over the rim of the basket at the receding earth. This sensation quickly gave place to one of exultation—the exultation of a wild animal loosed in its native haunts after long confinement. Paul became possessed of a desire to shout. His blood tingled through his veins. He drank the pure atmosphere in great draughts, and it stimulated him like wine. He felt almost that he could do anything—fly if he wished.

This was the first awakening in Paul of the primitive instinct which every human has inherited from prehistoric ancestors—an inborn love of the glorious freedom of the great wide wilderness where individual man stands supreme in his own right and where he may roam at will without restraint; where he feels that he is a person and not an atom; where he may meet nature face to face, and fearlessly match his human skill against her forces.

Too often this instinct to retreat for a time to the wild places of the earth, to stand with bared head under the open sky, to breathe great lungfuls of pure atmosphere undefiled by the smoke of chimneys, to make the acquaintance of rocks and trees, of mountains and sea—to renew one’s faith in God—is smothered by the luxuries and pamperings of civilization. So it had been with Paul.

Standing on the deck of the North Star that bright July morning, in the midst of nature’s most rugged abode, that primordial instinct slumbering in his breast had then its first awakening. He seemed to expand. He felt himself grow. He longed to set foot upon those mysterious shores—to wrest from them their secrets. Presently he was to do so. Perhaps, had he known how close to the condition of his prehistoric ancestors he was to drift, he would have shrunk from his destiny. It is well for our peace of mind that an all-wise God hides from us today the happenings of tomorrow.

At length the North Star passed out into the wider waters of Ungava Bay, and directly after dinner Remington suggested:

“Suppose you bring your rifle, Paul, and I’ll get a box of cartridges. We’ll try it out and see how you can shoot.”

Paul had been looking forward to this opportunity, and a moment later he appeared with the rifle.

“Now draw a bead on that bit of ice out there,” said his instructor, “and we’ll see how you hold. Run your left hand farther forward on the stock—can’t hold steady with it away back like that—a little farther out—that’s better. Now you can stand straight and not have to bend backward like a woman does when she tries to shoot. Do you get the ice? Look through the notch on the rear sight, and bring the bead on the front sight in contact with the bottom of your object. Got it? Try it again. Now we’ll load. Now try it.”